North west match fishing scene

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Spring view fishery

With the weather being a bit up and down over the last few days plus the fact I hadn’t been feeling to great I decided that I was better of not contesting a match , as you all know it can be quite hard to find a venue that is free on a Sunday but I managed to come across one and I chose to go to Spring view fisheries which is only about ten minutes from my house but is somewhere that I had not been since I was at school , the one good thing about a pleasure session is that you can have a lie in before deciding when to set off and with it bouncing it down after I had got up i obviously waited for it to subside before heading off on my short journey to the venue .

When i arrived at the venue I had a quick word with the bailiff who pointed me in the right direction regarding pegs + methods and I choose to go on Perchy pool which was chicken leg in shape it also had a few floating islands knocking about , the peg I sat on was 18 that was situated down the split with my back towards Abbotts lake and I decided to keep things nice+simple setting up ;

Straight lead at 25m towards one off the sunken island and I used a 9ft matrix carpmaster tip rod with a half ounce bomb my hook length was 18 inch of 014 Garbo that had a size 14 lwg hook that had a mini bait band attached as i was using an 8mm pellet .

Margin swim it was three-foot tight to the edge so I used a 0.4 diamond patterned float that had a staggered bulk above the six-inch 014 Garbo hook length and it had a size 14 guru hook attached to it .

Top five-line were after plumbing up I found it to be just over five foot deep and it also felt a bit sticky indicating a bit of silt , I used a 0.4 speedy float with a bulk+dropper shotting pattern my main line was the usual 014 Garbo and a six-inch 012 hook length that had a size 16 guru hook which had a micro band attached .

Bait for the day couldn’t be much simpler ;

3 pints 4mm pellets

1 pint soaked micros

1 pint ground-bait

Small tub of 4+6mm expanders

I started my pleasure session by casting my straight lead towards the floating island at 25m and firing a dozen 4mm pellets every couple of minutes , I also re-cast every six minutes but forty minutes without so much as a liner wasnt what I expected because it was supposedly stuffed with carp . I had feed my top five-line every ten minutes with half a small cupping kit of pellets and with the odd bubble coming up I decided to give it a try as it couldn’t be any worse than my straight lead , I lowered my rig in then held it still against the slight tow in the water and I didn’t have to wait too long before my float dipped under but after lifting my pole up i felt the jag , jag of a foul hooked fish not the start I wanted and i also had the same problem with my next fish so there seemed to be a few carp present I just had to find a way of hooking them in the mouth . By altering my shotting pattern to allow for a slower fall of the hook bait this finally got me a proper bite just as my pellet reached bottom , but I didn’t get this one either as after I lifted into it the carp just kept on going bottoming my size 14 elastic resulting in my hook length breaking and it was turning out to be one of them days when nothing went right ! !

I stepped up on the strength of my hook length I went back out and after a fifteen minute wait my float shot under again but this time I didn’t have time to strike before my elastic came out , after what seemed like an age I finally had it under control and up popped a near double figure mirror carp but after shipping back out all I could manage was a few missed bites because the swim was fizzing really bad which is what I thought would happen at the start of the session when I had plumbed up to find lots of silt . I went back onto my straight lead while it settled down but apart from a few liners it was a total waste of time and as the fizzing had finally subsided on my pole swim i dropped back on it , I managed two quick carp around the three-pound mark but even though I hadn’t feed anything the bottom was stirred up again and I was back to missing bites+foul hooking fish .

With nothing much else going right I decided to plumb up a new swim on my top three which was only six-inch shallower but it did seem to be a bit firmer bottom and I should have really taken more time at the start rather than just reacting to what the bailiff told me at the start ,I also changed to tapping in a few 4mm pellets through a kinder pot plus I tried a 6mm expander rather than a hard pellet and by doing this I began getting more positive indications , my first fish was a five-pound ghostie I finally managed to attract a few carp which included a gold-fish over a pound and I remembered catching these a very long time ago . But even though I had been really negative with the feeding the fizzing returned and it didn’t help when another double figure carp stirred up the bottom as it made its way to the net I then had to struggle with foul hooked fish+missed bites in between catching some hand sized commons , when I noticed things going a bit funny on my top three I started feeding my margin so I decided to drop on there to see what that produced and I had a carp about four pounds straight away but even after re-feeding I couldn’t get anymore indications .

Back onto my top three swim I managed another three decent carp before I got seen off by another big carp and with the fizzing returning meaning more missed bites + foul hooked fish, I decided to call time on my short four-hour session I ended up with a dozen carp up to double figures which wasnt that bad on my first visit but more importantly I felt that I had learned a great deal about Spring view fishery and I wont be leaving it as long before my next visit .